Papadums

These crispy crunchy discs of Indian bread, also known as poppadoms, depending on your pronunciation, are widely available, either ready-cooked or ready-to-cook. In India they are commonly served with vegetarian meals. If you wonder down a market street in Delhi of Mumbai, you'll find them sold by street vendors along with other delicious fare. Plain or flavoured with spices or seasoned with black or red pepper, they are a firm favourite with any spicy meal. The dough is generally made from dried pulses, but can also be made from potato or semolina. After the dough is rolled thinly the resulting discs are left to dry on the sun, to be cooked later either by frying or being placed on a hot grill. Either way they are golden in seconds, ready to be devoured. Broken into shards, they also make great dip chips.

Ingredients:
2 litres lentil flour (urad, moong, chana or gram dhal flour)
5ml freshly ground black pepper
5ml ground cumin
5ml asafoetida (hing)
5ml salt
60-65ml water
vegetable oil for frying

Method:

Preheat the oven to 100-120C.

Mix flour, pepper, cumin and salt. Add enough of the water to form a dough and knead until you have a smooth and elastic texture. Roll the dough into a sausage of about 1.5-2 inch diameter. Using and oiled thread, split the sausage into 10-15 discs and roll out one disc at a time on a lightly oiled surface (or between two layers of cling film) to a very thin circle - the thinner you can make them, the crispier they will be.

Dry the papadums in the oven for an hour and store in an air tight container.

To prepare, Fry the papadums in vegetable oil until they are crispy and golden. Drain on kitchen paper towel and serve warm.